The role of woman in Frankenstein by MaBe https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h en-us 2019-04-09 16:44:16 UTC 2023-08-16 18:34:46 UTC hello@padlet.com Elizabeth mariabeatrice_quagliani https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350042918 “docile and good tempered” 
“gay and playful”
“continually endeavors to contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself”
“chase away the fiend that lurked in his heart” ]]> 2019-04-09 17:16:04 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350042918 Frankenstein mariabeatrice_quagliani https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350044054 “no creature could have more tender parents than he did” ]]> 2019-04-09 17:18:16 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350044054 Monster mariabeatrice_quagliani https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350044747 “poor, helpless and miserable” 
“no Eve soothed his sorrows, or shared his thoughts; he was alone” 
“malicious because he is miserable” 
“Shall each man… find a wife for his bosom… and I be alone” 
“the interchange of those sympathies” ]]> 2019-04-09 17:19:30 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350044747 mariabeatrice_quagliani https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350050470 By contrast, the female gender in Frankenstein is portrayed in a more sympathetic light and corresponds closely to Victorian ideals of women as familial care-givers. Elizabeth Lavenza is described as “docile and good tempered”, yet “gay and playful”; these seemingly paradoxical qualities underscore Elizabeth’s role as that of the model Victorian woman whose sole duty concerns tending to her husband and family. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth’s selfless nature is also evinced through how she “continually endeavors to contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself”– the use of “entirely” here underscores the female gender’s complete relegation to the background of the Victorian social milieu. In addition, the phrase “gentle and affectionate disposition” further identifies Elizabeth with maternal qualities and entrenches her role as the primary care-giver for the family. This sense of altruistic benevolence is shared by Safie De Lacey; save for “some jewels and a small sum of money” which provide for her escape, she renounces great luxury to reunite with her lover, Felix De Lacey. During the journey, Safie even nurses her attendant “with the utmost affection”; this reversal of the lord-servant relationship stresses Safie’s motherly compassion, which transcends both rank and station. The repetition of “affection” further calls attention to the common thread of a warm and tender disposition which is ubiquitous among the female characters in Frankenstein. In both description and action, Frankenstein’sfemale characters thus uniformly exhibit self-sacrificing, maternal traits that conform closely to the role of the Angel in the House, whose life is characterized by complete dedication to the needs of her household.
With its hyper-idealized portrayals of the female gender, Shelley goes further to explicate the significant influence of such maternal figures. Frankenstein himself professes that “no creature could have more tender parents than he did”, which suggests a childhood replete with parental care and attention; in contrast, his monster’s first experiences are characterized by his being “poor, helpless and miserable”, which conveys a marked poverty of maternal nourishment and nurture.  Tellingly, though the monster gains consciousness while physically mature, the lines “feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept” highlight the monster’s delayed recognition of his own powerlessness and a deferred grief which echoes an infant’s wailing and vulnerability upon emerging from the womb. Crucially, the perceived significance of a female nurturing presence is alluded to in the monster’s cry of how “no Eve soothed his sorrows, or shared his thoughts; he was alone”, which emphasizes not just the prolonged isolation of the monster from birth, but also specifically how “Eve”, or a necessarily female companion, will provide the affection which he desires. Because of the congruence of feminine gender roles with care-giving and affection, the monster’s declaration of how he is “malicious because he is miserable” and his bitter cry of “Shall each man… find a wife for his bosom… and I be alone” further undergird his actions as reactive responses indicative of an underlying desperation at the dearth of female tenderness and maternal figures in his life. The monster’s specific requests of female companionship for “the interchange of those sympathies” when thus contextualized therefore stresses the patent importance of the female gender in its domestic roles of mother and nurturer. By contrast, there is a plethora of female characters that pervade Frankenstein’s supportive environment – though Frankenstein himself suffers great tragedy throughout the novel, Elizabeth constantly attempts to “chase away the fiend that lurked in his heart”, which encapsulates the prevalence of female companionship and its ameliorative effects on his life. Instead, the creature does not share the same luxuries. Though of course his cruelty cannot easily be reduced to a singular cause, the paucity of female presence nonetheless occludes all redemptive potential for the monster and in this way, cleaves a dichotomy between the narrative trajectories of him and his creator. Within the polarized gender dynamics that operate in the diegetic world of Frankenstein, the idea of nurture itself necessarily assumes a feminine dimension – from this perspective, his creature hence serves as a foil that suggests how the consequences of a poverty of female influence and maternal nurture are inadvertently the figurative molding and shaping of monsters.]]> 2019-04-09 17:30:55 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350050470 INTRODUCTION mariabeatrice_quagliani https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350051730 The novel was made and published by Mary shelley daugheter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who had a strong influenze in her daughter's cultural formation . Godwin was a liberal philosopher and politician, while is mother is considered a femminist essayst, author of ''The difense of woman rights''. The book goes against every thought of its time. In it origines that men and woman should recive equal education and rights, since woman are fondamental to the growth of the nation in which they live. But not only, according to Mary's mother , the conventions concerning sex. 


Mary's mother died giving birth to the daugheter of the same name, who grew up eith equally progressive father. 
At the age of 16 Mary meets Percy Shelley, the famous romantic poet and start a tumultuos extra-marital relationship util the death of Shelley's wife. Mary Shalley was influenced by the historical period and the ideal of Victorialism on the ''Angel of the house '', and the convention og the time limited Mary Shelley to express her role as a woman , artist and woman. Let's not forget that in his first version , Frankenstein come out anonymous and could not signed by a woman. Mary is a woman disobeys her father, witch is the obstacle in herunion with married man. This disobedience is embodied in Frankenstein which is the ideal of freedom, 
The female role in Frankenstein corrispons to the Victorian ideals of woman as mothers of family. 

]]> 2019-04-09 17:33:23 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350051730 mariabeatrice_quagliani https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350052027 While Frankenstein elucidates the marked importance of women as guiding, maternal figures in the family, the novel also explores the centrality of female gender roles as bulwarks of the social order. As alluded to earlier, one central question which features in the novel is whether it is the unnatural circumstances of the monster’s creation or his ensuing abandonment by Frankenstein which factors more for his monstrosity; however, if nature is understood to be an ideal state conducing to the optimal, in Frankensteinthe importance of feminine care in ensuring societal stability thus underscores a false dichotomy between nature and nurture because of the contingence of social stability on contemporary female gender-roles. The creation of Frankenstein’s monster upends nature entirely through its circumvention of natural birth; indeed, Frankenstein’s pursuit of nature to “her hiding places” emphasizes his unravelling of natural laws which were concealed for a reason. On an organic level, the artificial nature of the monster’s creation renders moot the biological imperative of the female gender; this theme is actualized through the monster’s systematic elimination of feminized characters in the novel, including biological males such as Henry Clerval whose spending of an entire winter “consumed in [Frankenstein’s] sick room” nonetheless recalls the maternal selflessness. During Frankenstein’s dream on the night of the creature’s creation, his vision of Elizabeth’s metamorphosis into “the corpse of [his] dead mother” similarly constitutes a vivid metaphor for how the monster’s unnatural birth at once heralds both the physical and metaphysical deaths of the fairer sex. Yet, this seeming superfluity of the female sex is suggested to be ill-founded, for Frankenstein details the implicit consequences of such an alternate reality. Where once Elizabeth’s “gentle voice would soothe [Frankenstein] when transported by passion”, the scarcity of such feminine characters at the end of his life directly signifies the absence of mediating influences to temper his inhuman fury. Alongside the dearth of female nurturing and affection in the monster’s psyche, this thematic paucity of female influences culminates in a barren wasteland, with two masculine figures consumed in an endless game of cat-and-mouse, devoid of feminine influence and consequently simply the “prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched”. The juxtaposition and framing of this icy apocalyptic vision within Walton’s frequent correspondence with his sister further underscores the disparity between this speculative male-centric dystopia and the stable nineteenth-century society, with all its prevailing gender roles, to which Walton belongs. Hence, insofar as the monster’s creation may have sounded the death knell for the female sex on some level, Frankenstein’s ending illustrates the devastating inadequacy of this hypothetical new normal. The novel suggests that even without the biological imperative of the female sex, their social gender-roles as maternal nurturers are enshrined into the natural societal equilibrium, or nature itself, and in this way, on equal footing with the gendered roles of men.

 

At its core, Frankenstein is a parable which explores the manifest possibilities and consequences when humanity confronts and breaches the limits of nature. However, through imbuing its characters with conventionally gender-specific traits, Frankenstein illustrates that the female gender roles of nineteenth-century British society are not simply accessory to that of men; insofar as women are instrumental to the nurturing of children and loved ones, Shelley does not simply foreground their maternal significance but elevates its importance to parity with men’s social roles. Almost certainly, Frankenstein will not pass for a “feminist” text by today's standards; yet, in presenting “the truth of the elementary principles of human nature”, Shelley goes so far as to surface the patchwork intricacies of female gender roles which had not yet been embedded in the public consciousness of the era. More crucially, Shelley rears contemporary gender doctrine on its head – far from the caregiving and child-rearing roles of women thus limiting them to the sidelines of society, it is precisely their indispensability that situates them center-stage. Through this recuperation of the female gender and its social significance, Shelley strongly echoes the thought of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who famously advocated for widespread women’s education in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, on largely similar grounds. While markedly essentialist, Shelley nonetheless critiques the ostensibly marginal contributions of women to the social order and paints an incisive reflection of the conditions of human nature and society more progressive than espoused at the time of its publication. The creation of Frankenstein’s monster and its inability to nullify female gender roles attests to the latter’s kaleidoscopic significance in both the domestic and social spheres – and ultimately pave the way for the New Woman to break out of these very limiting confines.

 

 

 

]]> 2019-04-09 17:33:57 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350052027 isabellapratesi2001 https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350108261 2019-04-09 19:24:20 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350108261 isabellapratesi2001 https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350108377 2019-04-09 19:24:36 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350108377 isabellapratesi2001 https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350108540 2019-04-09 19:25:00 UTC https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350108540 The centrality of female gender roles as bulwarks of the social order lauretta47 https://padlet.com/mariabeatrice_quagliani/4grw6dc3ck2h/wish/350122341 While Frankenstein elucidates the marked importance of women as guiding, maternal figures in the family, the novel also explores the centrality of female gender roles as bulwarks of the social order. As alluded to earlier, one central question which features in the novel is whether it is the unnatural circumstances of the monster’s creation or his ensuing abandonment by Frankenstein which factors more for his monstrosity; however, if nature is understood to be an ideal state conducing to the optimal, in Frankenstein the importance of feminine care in ensuring societal stability thus underscores a false dichotomy between nature and nurture because of the contingence of social stability on contemporary female gender-roles. The creation of Frankenstein’s monster upends nature entirely through its circumvention of natural birth; indeed, Frankenstein’s pursuit of nature to “her hiding places” emphasizes his unravelling of natural laws which were concealed for a reason. On an organic level, the artificial nature of the monster’s creation renders moot the biological imperative of the female gender; this theme is actualized through the monster’s systematic elimination of feminized characters in the novel, including biological males such as Henry Clerval whose spending of an entire winter “consumed in [Frankenstein’s] sick room” nonetheless recalls the maternal selflessness. During Frankenstein’s dream on the night of the creature’s creation, his vision of Elizabeth’s metamorphosis into “the corpse of [his] dead mother” similarly constitutes a vivid metaphor for how the monster’s unnatural birth at once heralds both the physical and metaphysical deaths of the fairer sex. Yet, this seeming superfluity of the female sex is suggested to be ill-founded, for Frankenstein details the implicit consequences of such an alternate reality. Where once Elizabeth’s “gentle voice would soothe [Frankenstein] when transported by passion”, the scarcity of such feminine characters at the end of his life directly signifies the absence of mediating influences to temper his inhuman fury. Alongside the dearth of female nurturing and affection in the monster’s psyche, this thematic paucity of female influences culminates in a barren wasteland, with two masculine figures consumed in an endless game of cat-and-mouse, devoid of feminine influence and consequently simply the “prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched” . The juxtaposition and framing of this icy apocalyptic vision within Walton’s frequent correspondence with his sister further underscores the disparity between this speculative male-centric dystopia and the stable nineteenth-century society, with all its prevailing gender roles, to which Walton belongs. Hence, insofar as the monster’s creation may have sounded the death knell for the female sex on some level, Frankenstein’s ending illustrates the devastating inadequacy of this hypothetical new normal. The novel suggests that even without the biological imperative of the female sex, their social gender-roles as maternal nurturers are enshrined into the natural societal equilibrium, or nature itself, and in this way, on equal footing with the gendered roles of men.

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